


Simplicity

by kurtoons



Category: Ancient History RPF
Genre: Ancient Rome, Assassination Attempt(s), Gen, Poetry, death trap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8139296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurtoons/pseuds/kurtoons
Summary: An episode from the career of the Emperor Nero, containing sage advice for us all:"He learned life's sad and tragic quirk;Sometimes the Death-trap does not work."





	

_"No, Mister Bond, I expect you to DIE!!!"_  
\-- A. Goldfinger

 

Perhaps sometime you chanced to read  
Melodramatic narrative  
Of villainy and dastard deed  
As full of plot-holes as a sieve.  
The Hero's trapped in Evil's Lair;  
The Villain vows to seal his doom.  
He does not kill him then and there;  
Instead he simply leaves the room!  
What sort of overweening sap  
By hubris blind or on a whim  
Would make a complicated trap  
Instead of simply shooting him?  
It happens that long, long ago  
There really was just such a man;  
He sought to kill his direst foe  
But used an over-cunning plan.  
He learned life's sad and tragic quirk  
Sometimes the death-trap does not work.

Nero, the Roman emperor,  
Had a domineering mother.  
Nagged him 'til his nerves were sore  
And he wished his Mom to smother.  
So Nero hired an artisan  
To rig her ceiling to collapse  
And crush her flat as marzipan  
Next time she took one of her naps.  
When that lethal architecture  
Fell just like a cataclysm,  
She was out, ('tis my conjecture)  
Sitting on the euphemism.  
Outside the bedroom she did lurk  
And so the death-trap did not work.

The next plan that Nero approved,  
Was to construct a special boat;  
It had a plug, which when removed  
Would cause the ship to cease to float.  
And so with nothing else to lose  
He placed his unsuspecting mater  
Off upon this deadly cruise  
On which the waves would inundate her.  
He thought the plan out through and through;  
He knew this trap just could not fail;  
But he forgot to tell the crew  
That they were not supposed to bail.  
They worked the pumps and did not shirk;  
And so the death-trap did not work.

In vain they labored through the dark  
Against the leak which would immerse  
Them all -- they could not save the barque  
But did save all the passengers.  
The Mother paddled safe to shore,  
Her toga drenched and draped with kelp.  
She saw a guard there, armed for war  
And asked him for a little help.  
The man knew well the emp'ror's dream  
To see no more his Mom alive,  
And so the guard devised a scheme  
To see to it she'd not survive.  
He saw no need for all the fuss,  
And thought the snares and gadgets dumb;  
He simply drew his gladius  
And punctured her duodenum.  
He did the dame in with his dirk;  
Because a death-trap would not work.

_L'envoi:_

The Moral of this doggerel  
Is clearly plain for all to see:  
The plan you think is pretty swell  
May fail through its complexity.  
Then friends will shake their heads and smirk:  
_"I KNEW that death-trap would not work!"_

**Author's Note:**

> The actual story of how Nero tried to kill his mother is even weirder and more complicated than my version.
> 
> Nero's mother was Agrippina the Younger, the second wife of the Emperor Claudius. It's generally believed that she played an important part in the poisoned mushrooms which wound up on Claudius's dinner plate and precipitated his ascent to godhood. But from the moment she put her darling boy on the throne, the two quarreled. She insisted on trying to micromanage his love affairs, and being Emperor, he felt he ought to be able to bed anyone he wanted.
> 
> At first, he tried poisoning her; but being a practiced poisoner herself, she was in the habit of taking antidotes regularly.
> 
> According to the historian Suetonius, he had a mechanical ceiling constructed to crush her in her sleep; but she was warned about it in advance and so avoided the trap. Tacitus also mentions a falling ceiling, but says it was part of Nero's next attempt, the Yacht of Death. In Tacitus' account, the ceiling was made of lead, to ensure that it killed her; but the projecting sides of the couch on which she slept checked its fall and prevented it from striking her.
> 
> The collapsible boat was actually a clever idea, because he reasoned it would look like an accidental shipwreck. Nero arranged for a situation where his mother would have to sail on the rigged ship rather than her own yacht. When the trap was activated and the ship began to sink, the soldiers on board had been ordered to all rush to one side of the deck so that the ship would capsize. The rest of the crew, however, did not know about this plan, so when the ship began to tip, they all ran to the other side to even it out. The ship did ultimately sink, but it happened slowly enough that Agrippina was able to swim to safety.
> 
> She was rescued by fishermen and taken to her own villa. She had figured out that the shipwreck was no accident, but pretended otherwise because she knew that publicly accusing her son would force him to take more drastic action. She hoped that he would back off in order to maintain appearances.
> 
> Her hope failed. Nero feigned that the servant his mother had sent to tell him she had survived, had actually been sent to assassinate him; planted a dagger on the messenger; and sent assassins of his own to Agrippina with orders to make it look like a suicide. According to Cassius Dio, when the centurion leading the hit team drew his sword and she realized that her time was up, Agrippina exposed her belly and told him "Smite my womb"


End file.
